While your desire to protect your kids is understandable, state legislation is not the venue.
Frankly, there are a ton of holes in your argument.
1) If this 17 year old were a neighbor rather than an online friend, how would this change it? Does it dictate prohibitions on 11 year olds socializing with neighbors. You know that most (90%+) of child sexual assault occurs from a close friend, neighbor or family member, right? Should we prohibit all children from interacting with males.... period. Some airlines have moved to make it prohibited to seat males (ANY males) next to an unaccompanied minor on an airplane.
Thirty years ago, socializing amongst kids and teens was done at the mall, or the diner. Today it is done on WoW or MySpace.
However, prohibiting that is more aking to prohibiting them from visiting the cafe, or the mall, without signed parental permission. Doesn't that seem absurd to you, having grown up when the diner or the mall was the primary means of social contact?
I do not have a kid of my own, but most of my close friends do and a few I admire a great deal for their parenting. They know what their kids do online and have enough trust that if a friend does something they know might be questionable, they come to them and mention it. Surprising, sure, but their relationship is based on respect rather than on threat of force, obligation or moral indignation like most parents. And these parents have never had ANYTHING to do with "absolute" right and wrong, but instead teach a keen sense of recognition for things that are out of the ordinary, which is definately not beyond the capacity of any kid old enough to desire to have 'adult' conversations with a 17 year old teenager.
Legislating ANYTHING that is not DIRECTCLY harmful to people is an absolutely absurd example of our nanny state. It should be illegal to stab someone, or rape them. It should not be illegal to "go to the mall" or "talk to a stranger" or "wear sunglasses", despite the fact taht each of these things might, potentially, sometimes indicate that you have nefarious intentions, or that you (being a kid) are putting yourself in some slight danger of harm. Your child is STILL statistically more likely to be struck by lightening than to be assaulted by a stranger from the Internet, despite the sensationalist media portraying it otherwise and your swallowing it, hook, line, and sinker.
The concept of individual weapon ownership may have been a deterrent to both criminals and governments, from the times of the Greeks through World War 1.
Since World War 1, it is no longer a deterrent to governments.
As has been shown in overseas wars, a small detachment of a dozen or so trained marines with modern weapons can mow down several thousand citizens. This is not utilizing things such as cruise missles, air strikes, battleships, or even more feared weapons like tactical nukes, napalm, bio and chemical, etc.
The simple fact is that no matter HOW MANY guns and knives a person might have in their home, the government can destroy them from outer space, with no manpower, no risk and no fear. This nullifies the deterrent of weapons far more than any "gun control" does.
I think that people with FEDERALIST leanings are more to blame. Isolated pockets of socialism are not damaging when they are confined. At that point, it becomes a choice, rather than an obligation. For example, if California decided they wanted welfare, excelelnt. It is the nationwide push for such things that cause problems.
Our country was designed (and was most efficiently operated) as a loosely coupled federation of states. The federal control extended to ALMOST nothing, except where it concerned one state accepting the laws of other states and where it concerned international trade, commerce, war and diplomacy.
In this structure, if California becomes corrupt with power, you are free to move to Oregon. Presumably, there would develop a certain state of homeostasis between locations as like minded individuals move together and learn to inter operate with other groups of unlike minded people.
On the far other extreme end from your socialist comment lies a society of laissez-faire corporate oligarchy, not seen since the "oil baron" days of entire cities, owned, policed and supervised by corporate regulations and institutions, where corporations oppress citizens in exactly the same way, from exactly the opposite direction.
Surely there is a balance in the middle?
Regardless, the balance must be approached seperately by a number of smaller state governments, rather than centrally by a bureaucratic federal dictatorship.
The simple fact is that human nature tends to cause us to use power whenever we can. This is the reason that there are checks and balances in our government. Some smart guys realized a few hundred years ago, that a position with unchecked power will eventually be abused by a person seeking personal gain.
This is a fact.
This is a truth of humanity.
Laws such as the patriot act, which remove checks and balances and allow individuals or small groups of like-minded individuals to act unilaterally in a way that is damaging to the rights of other citizens is a gross violation of this principle and is evidence to a loss of touch with what our government is put in place to do.
While protecting the people is a primary goal of a government, protecting the people must weigh protections both on the freedom and liberty of people against the PHYSICAL protection of people.
Unfortunately, our society is so sheltered from physical trauma, we have grown risk-averse in a disturbing way.
A few hundred years ago, when most people did not reach 60, and 1/4 of children died before adolescence, we had a realistic view of how important liberty is in our society. People dealt with death and destruction, as it was part of nature. Liberty, however, was not a constant and had to be protected at all costs.
Today, people take liberty for granted and so fear death and destruction that they will throw away their liberty for temporary saftey.
This is the trap which our founding fathers warned us against. They saw its power and also its danger.
With 1200 senators, the legislator would pass nothing, except "castrate the sex offenders" legislation, since that's the only thing that would make it out of filibuster.:-)
Goal: Stop Islamic terrorists from threatening the US.
OK, now the question lies in whether or not there is a way to stop islamic terrorists from threatening the US.
The question IS NOT "how do we kick Sadam out of Iraq". In fact, "kick Sadam out of Iraq" is more on the solution end than on the question end.
But there are alternatives other than "kick Sadam out of Iraq".
I am not saying that I disagree that this is at least a moderately justified action, but also pointing out that your bone-headed logic makes you look like an imbecilic ideologue.
One of the primary problems with RFID is that it is "wireless" in nature. It is also designed to be "simplistic" for the simple case of economic savings.
While it is a great technology for information such as Barcode scanning and inventory tracking, its use in biometrics, identification and access controls is less secure. Transmitting significant and irrevocable information in an RFID pulse is irresponsible.
Where a barcode is ubiquitous and the concept of "stealing" it is silly, and even where the ID number of a "proxmity card" employee ID badge is easily revocable, information stored on a passport, such as biometrics, permanent identification numbers and the like are not revocable.
In short, this new RFID identity system is one of the most ill-advised and potentially dangerous (vulnerable to easy identity theft) systems in recent history, and is simply ASKING for people to duplicate it, while providing no benefit other than the government control ("papers please") that it demands.
The 5.3.8 and newer revisions supported IE7, but none of them until 5.3.10 supported "Intel Macs". Both of which are new releases that came out AFTER IE7 was released.
The day IE7 came out, no revisions that worked properly with IE7 were available. 5.4R1 came out shortly later but was very buggy (WSAM barely worked). Then a few months later, 5.3R9 came out that did have IE7 support also.
We are currently running 5.3R10 as it is the most reliable version that has all of the support we need. 5.4R2.1 is out, but still has some niggling issues we weren't happy with.
Keep in mind we have some *very* complicated rulesets for different business areas, different levels of access and different resources.
WSUS is great, and I'm definatley aware of how it works, but 90% of my users use laptops from public wireless APs or via cell phone wireless "broadband".
Neither of which is conducive to forcing updates from a central server.
The jump from different phylum, rather than simply different species is an extrapolation, this is correct.
There are plenty of fossil records of animals that are intermediary steps between two different "types" of animals. I have seen about 12 intermediate steps between something that could be best described as "dog" to the modern "horse". There is a well documented progression in that regard that is a sum of small steps such as lenghtening limbs, snout, bone mass, apparent muscle structure, etc
There are clear fossil progressions between what could be described as a "catfish" and what could be described as a "salamander" in very small steps, each of which is not a "blind jump".
While not all species have recorded fossils for this change, this is very likely due to something you pointed out.... the situation that leads to fossilization is somewhat rare on a global scale.
It is somewhat spurious to claim that since we didn't OBSERVE a process that took 1 million years, that it simply didn't happen. There are many examples of progressive steps from one place to another and there are many observable changes that are at least as significant.
As for your grand canyon reference..... the volume of water has less to do with the speed of erosion than the time involved in that erosion. You can rush a quadrillion gallons of water over limestone for a month and it won't gouge a mile deep hole. It will rush right over it, stripping all of the boulders and loose sediment from the surface. However, if you set a garden hose-sized, sediment-rich stream out on a limestone rock, you can dig a few inch deep hole a decade or so. Rerouted water for dams and irrigation have shown that very cleary. Given the canyon is dated at 4 million years, there is ample time to dig a mile or two into solid rock.
In addition, during the last ice age, parts of the canyon were glacier beds. We know with some certainty that sediment-bedded glaciers can dig much faster than water. It has been clearly measured... Not that this is even necessary given the erosion capability of water over 5 million years.
Your whole grand canyon tack relies on a bunch of false prepositions and ignorant assumptions and is mostly circular.
Are you one of the kooks who argues that radioisotope dating is wrong as well? I'm sure you can produce a book or two that states this theory, but it is not backed up in fact. It generally relies on gross misunderstandings of the process to attempt to prove a point, while it actually is a laughingstock amongst physicists who actually understand the process.
Your argument on both these cases is akin to this one:
Me: I heard of a man that once walked across the United States. You: This is impossible! I've never observed a man walk more than 2 miles in a stretch and that took him a whole hour! Even the best runners run 25 miles in 3 hours! Me: It supposedly took him over a year. You: This is impossible! I have never seen someone walk for a years! Me: He rested each evening and walked for 12 hours per day. You: This is fiction!! Nobody has ever seen a man walk for a year straight! Nobody has ever even seen a man walk for a week straight! Me: There are some photos of him walking through different places You: This is fiction!! Walking that far is impossible! Someone must have BROUGHT him there! Me: *sighs*
I can list the Enterprise applications that do not work, in any capacity, under IE7.
They work under IE6, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Konqueror, but not under IE7.
Juniper SA is one example. Some older versions of PeopleSoft act kind of funky. Some of the online CRM stuff doesn't behave properly.... there are others... not to mention all the internal software.
Blah.
Also, don't discount the fact that the average business-cost of a man-hour of employee time is about $30/hr and assuming a liberal 1 hour to coordinate with the user, access their machine and do a complete install and config (including staff overhead), the cost of deploying it to 60,000 users is a hair under $2 million in IT costs and $2 million in productivity loss during the upgrade process.
And then the question is "why did we just spend $4 million"? What did it get us?
It is very ordinary for a company (or government agency) to adopt a "wait and see" attitude toward new software. Most companies I've worked for will not install a new OS, new software, new firmware, new drivers or whatever until they've gone through at least one revision.
Recently because of Microsofts crappy handling of IE7 upgrades (flagging them as "critical updates"), we had a number of remote users on IE7 and our SSL VPN appliances simply would not work. I had to call a moritorium on upgrading to IE7 and deployed the Microsoft "prevent IE7 update" patch in order to stop these critical updates.
Then, I had to use early-release code for our Juniper VPN concentrator, which broke about half a dozen other things.... Finally, after a few weeks, new a firmware revision for the Juniper VPN came out which enabled me to get the box back to a stable state AND allow IE7 to be used.
But if we had simply called a "ban" on IE7 upgrades in the first place, it would have saved me a lot of headache and our company a lot of productivity.
This is not a "Microsoft sux" decision, but merely a business-case against early-release software that they would likely take whether it was Microsoft or Juniper or Cisco or Oracle or whatever...
Now, Microsoft's handling of the IE7 "critical update" bullcrap.... that falls clearly in the arena of "Microsoft sux".
All i can say is that evolution has a HELL of a lot more evidence than the big bang theory. Both of which are fairly widely accepted around the world as likely truth.
Not ONE of your so called "little jumps" has ever been observed in our day.
This claim is complete and blatant fabrication.
I will only list the ones that have happened in nature, since the number of speciation events that have been caused by direct human intervention are too many to count.
1) The beak length of the ground finch on Daphne Major Island has changed drastically and divergently since they were first observed a few hundred years ago. 2) Rapid speciation of the Faeroe Island house mouse, which occurred in less than 250 years after man brought the creature to the island. It is now clearly a new species (and incapable of interbreeding) from the house mouse found on the mainland, with noticably different physical features. 3) Dark moths have almost complete replaced white moths on softwood trees in fire-afflicted or pollution-heavy areas, where trees have grown dark instead of white (this was observed to have happened in less than 20 years), coming from a rare "albino" sort of gene that was a random mutation. 4) Goatsbeards flowers speciated in less than 300 years so that there is a new "North American" variant that is vastly different and genetically incompatable with the origional species. 5) Fruiteflys (Rhagoletis pomonella) have speciated naturally since the introduction of Apple Trees to North America a few hundred years ago into two (possibly more) incompatable species. 6) the grass Anthoxanthum has been known to undergo parapatric speciation in such cases as mine contamination of an area. Selection for resistance/tolerance to certain metals occurs. Flowering time generally changes (in an attempt at character displacement--strong selection against interbreeding--as the hybrids are generally ill-suited to the environment) and often plants will become self-pollinating.
Even a much "littler jump", such as the transformation of say a strepto-coccus type bacteria into a spirochete or other type has never been observed or even duplicated by intelligent researchers in a laboratory.
This claim is complete and blatant fabrication.
In a lab, bacterial speciation is actually considered a PROBLEM because it happens so often during lengthy experiments (30,000+ generations or so) that it tends to screw up the results and elaborate controls are put in place to prevent speciation. Google "bacteria speciation" to see for yourself. Read about the introduction of neucleotides to kill divergent species and the encouragement of genetic
The fact that one particular bacteria didn't turn into another particular bacteria doesn't show anything except that genetic divergence is a totally random process and with billions of nucleotides, the odds of one divergence being identical to one that happened in the past is so very unlikely as to be ridiculous.
More complex organisims have been made to speciate, by definition in as little as 6 generations. Consider the following: Rice and Salt bred fruit flies, Drosophila melanogaster, using a maze with three different choices such as light/dark and wet/dry. Each generation was placed into the maze, and the groups of flies which came out of two of the eight exits were set apart to breed with each other in their respective groups. After thirty-five generations, the two groups and their offspring would not breed with each other even when doing so was their only opportunity to reproduce.
or this one
Diane Dodd was also able to show allopatric speciation by reproductive isolation in Drosophila pseudoobscura fruit flies after only eight generations using different food types, starch and maltose.[7] Dodd's experiment has been easy for many others to replicate, including with other kinds of fruit flies and foods.
Or this
Shikano, et al. (1990) reported that an unidentified bacterium underwent a major morphological change when grown in the presence of a ciliate predator. This bacterium's normal morphology is a s
Frankly, one would have asked ten years ago "is mainframe administration a practical career".
A look at job postings would have told you "yes" but an educated discussion would have told you it was a dead end.
So frankly, your assertion is crap.
Monster tells you that there are great JOBS to be found... but does not tell you if it is a great career and whether a degree is essential or not (which has become the root of the discussion).
See, we graduated highschool around the same time. I attended a far away school because I got some scholarships to cover tuition costs and I graduated with a degree in Computer Engineering, with a focus on networking and InfoSec. I worked about 10 hours per week doing "sideline" jobs for an average rate of $50/hr (there was a "student discount" at $35/hr if they live on campus and the rest was $60/hr).
I also made some contacts in the world and was making about $70/hr doing freelance technical writing. I took a number of technical writing classes as electives and combined with my English and History classes, it gave me a great foundation in writing and communications.
I worked as an Intern with a large telecom doing Network Engineering the summer of my Senior year. I got the job because of my knowledge of ASIC design and assembly-level microprocessor programming, as we had a number of custom interfaces that required tweaking. I eventually graduated and got a full time job in the IT field. My full time position was unrelated to my programming work or my programming experience, but it was the contacts I made and the people I impressed with fundamental hardware knowledge that got me into the position.
I just moved into the position of IT Director for a sizable, nationwide consulting company and I find that my communication skills learned in college were the key that opened that particular door, after making contacts from my previous work because of my knowledge of ICs and low-level programming gained in college. I never wanted to be a programmer, but I was able to "leverage" (buzzword!!!) my skills to make contacts which resulted in my landing my Dream Job (I just turned 26).
The information security training I got by taking electives such as "Fundamentals of InfoSec" and the lab class called "Information Warfare" were the key that put together my contacts at my current position as I was spending time writing articles about security issues. These articles generated a discussion which my current employer oversaw and he invited me in for an Interview.
Ultimately, I have a few certs, but I'm not sure that my life would have changed if I had left them off my resume completely. The most valuable one I have is the CISSP, merely for the clout of it, but frankly, the test was one of the easier ones out there in my opinion, probably because of my college background, where I got a really deep understanding of the fundamentals behind the technology rather than the shallow "here is how the tool works" that you get from most certs (especially vendor-specific certs).
While it's really cool that you're an expert as Cisco IOS, judging from industry trends, Cisco IOS will be indistinguishable from current versions in a few years, if it still exists. Most routers are moving into PC-based GUI consoles for router interfacing, both for the simplicity (and resistance to user error) and the ability to dynamically allocate resources on a network-wide scale, without having to manually modify individual router configs. Juniper's newest version of NSM is a fabulous example of this. If you had bothered to become and expert in the command-line Juniper router config 6 years ago, your skill would be almost totally obsolete now, but if you could show a fundamental understanding of routing and IP, you would be valuable.
Certs address an immediate need, a short term goal and a shallow skillset. While they are valuable, they are not a "solution". A university degree almost ensures that you have addressed deeper levels of understanding and that you are capable of handling that level of understanding and pushing forward to complete something monumental (a degree) without backing out.
No cert will ever replace a degree in my opinion. I half a dozen certs and one degree.... if i had to pick one over the other on my resume, it is very obvious what i would choose. And yes, I would remove 4 years from my experience to show that degree.
On the other hand, I got a BS in Computer Engineering and moved into the position of IT Manager in 3 years (plus 3.5 for college). On the flip side, if IT gets outsourced to robots or Chinese, I have experience in chip design, microprocessor control integration, physics, history and mathematics.
While it's true I missed out on 4 years of $40k salary, I think the degree more than makes up for it.
You shake your head and say "it's not possible" but we could go through a hypothetical scenario where HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of these small changes evolves a guppy into a marmot.
Of course, it would be the length of a small book, but it could be done and there would be NO "magic leap".... just a clearly explainable series of small mutations that cause divergent EVOLUTION over time.
guppy -> tidal pool fish -> walking fish -> salamder -> gecko -> lizard -> mouse -> mole -> marmot
The only real leap I'm seeing here is the lizard -> mouse and I'll grant that I'm not experienced enough in evolutionary biology to summarize that jump, but the others are quite obvious and have very clear fossil precursors. There still exist today, walking fish... and a few species that do walk, but don't do it well.... while there are others that do it quite well and can live out of water for days.... and there are also amphibians that must return to the water regularily, just like there are reptiles that are very closely related to amphibians. The jump from mouse to mole to marmot can't be a huge one for your small brain either.
I don't see where there is a big magic gap. If you choose to imagine it happening in an instantaneous *poof* of evolution, then sure it doesn't make sense, but you can't even GRASP the concept of 300 million of something.... especially when there are many species of fish that mature in a few weeks. A hundred years could be 400 generations. Every hundred years, these fish have more generations than humans have had in all of recorded history (about 8,000 years). Do you know how many times 100 years has happened? 3 million times. How many is three million? Well lets say there is one obvious genetic mutation every 50 generations. This is very plausable from laboratory study and natural observations. In harsh climates its actually much less than 50 generations. So this is about 10 years for most species. Lets say it takes 100 such small changes to bring about "speciation".... AND that only one out of a THOUSAND of these changes permits better reproductive success. This could happen every 100,000 years.
Given 300 million years, this could result in 3,000 different seperate speciation event timeframes. Now, assuming every species that formed stuck around and spawned another speciation event every 100,000 years, that could results in.... mmmmmm *calculator pounding*.....
1.23 x 10^903 possible speciation events.
Lets assume that 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999999999999999999% (yes, that is 300 digits) of these species die out quickly.
We're left with.... 2.3 x 10^600 species
that's more atoms than there are in the universe.
Even if we assume it takes 1000 generations rather than 100 and takes 1000 mutations rather than 100.... the numbers of possible outcomes and the potential number of difference species is still astounding.
So called "micro evolution" is a clearly studied, documented, tested and provable theory. Creationists decry the made-up concept of "macro evolution", running on the assumption that big changes must happen "all at once". But where does "micro" turn to "macro"? Small changes are cumulitave. When you add up 100 or 1,000 of them, you find yourself with a vastly different organism that may not even be similar enough to their ancestor to breed (hence, a new species). You start again and a sum of small changes results in a vastly different animal. And then you do it again, a thousand small changes results in something vastly different... and then again... and again... and again... thousands of times. And you got fr
the theory of punctuated equilibrium is predicated on drastic climactic changes.
This is more akin to saying: A few men walk to work and home every single day for 10 years, without anything but minor changes.
Suddenly, their homes and offices are destroyed by a fire. He walks 100 miles to the next town over and begins a new routine, walking to home and work.
His office is destroyed so he stops walking to work for awhile.
Your "suddenly jump to sydney" is more akin to the concept that a fish suddenly turned into a monkey. In fact, the fish turned into a walking fish that turned into an amphibian which turned into a reptile. Those are changes that have fairly obvious progressions. You can see the walking fish that looks sort of like a fish and sort of like a salamader. You can see the gecko that looks sort of like a reptile and sort of like an amphibian. Now there were periods where those changes happened rapidly... perhaps because the seashore where they lived was made barren by climate changes, so only the few fish that were able to walk 100 yards inland were able to survive. Those 'fucked up mutated fish' were actually closer to a salamander in that they had funky sticks for fins (legs). They came from a line of fish that were remarkably tolerant to living out of the water for short periods because their ancestors had to spend some time in tidal pools during a period of low nutrient supply in coastal waters.
All of this happened within 1000 years and therefore, on a geological scale, it is absolutely unrecordably short.... punctuated equilibrium.
We see fish... and suddenly we see salamanders and how did we get there? Well there were a few generations of really fucked up mutated fish that just happened to survive by crawling onto the beach while all their "normal" buddies had to swim out to sea and turn into sharks. From a modern day looking back, the change happened "immediately". After all, they were fish for 100,000 years and suddenly in 50 years they became amphibians. woah!
your misunderstanding of the theory makes your argument weak.
Uhm.... about 18 of those questions are totally bunk.
Name calling, blatant oversight, willful ignorance.... some other phrases I can't haven't thought of yet.
the other two... well those are lingering questions rather than "proof positive". As for creationism.... aside from one ancient, poorly translated text, it is all a "lingering question".
Slashdot Mirror
While your desire to protect your kids is understandable, state legislation is not the venue.
Frankly, there are a ton of holes in your argument.
1) If this 17 year old were a neighbor rather than an online friend, how would this change it? Does it dictate prohibitions on 11 year olds socializing with neighbors. You know that most (90%+) of child sexual assault occurs from a close friend, neighbor or family member, right? Should we prohibit all children from interacting with males.... period. Some airlines have moved to make it prohibited to seat males (ANY males) next to an unaccompanied minor on an airplane.
Thirty years ago, socializing amongst kids and teens was done at the mall, or the diner. Today it is done on WoW or MySpace.
However, prohibiting that is more aking to prohibiting them from visiting the cafe, or the mall, without signed parental permission. Doesn't that seem absurd to you, having grown up when the diner or the mall was the primary means of social contact?
I do not have a kid of my own, but most of my close friends do and a few I admire a great deal for their parenting. They know what their kids do online and have enough trust that if a friend does something they know might be questionable, they come to them and mention it. Surprising, sure, but their relationship is based on respect rather than on threat of force, obligation or moral indignation like most parents. And these parents have never had ANYTHING to do with "absolute" right and wrong, but instead teach a keen sense of recognition for things that are out of the ordinary, which is definately not beyond the capacity of any kid old enough to desire to have 'adult' conversations with a 17 year old teenager.
Legislating ANYTHING that is not DIRECTCLY harmful to people is an absolutely absurd example of our nanny state. It should be illegal to stab someone, or rape them. It should not be illegal to "go to the mall" or "talk to a stranger" or "wear sunglasses", despite the fact taht each of these things might, potentially, sometimes indicate that you have nefarious intentions, or that you (being a kid) are putting yourself in some slight danger of harm. Your child is STILL statistically more likely to be struck by lightening than to be assaulted by a stranger from the Internet, despite the sensationalist media portraying it otherwise and your swallowing it, hook, line, and sinker.
Stewed
The concept of individual weapon ownership may have been a deterrent to both criminals and governments, from the times of the Greeks through World War 1.
Since World War 1, it is no longer a deterrent to governments.
As has been shown in overseas wars, a small detachment of a dozen or so trained marines with modern weapons can mow down several thousand citizens. This is not utilizing things such as cruise missles, air strikes, battleships, or even more feared weapons like tactical nukes, napalm, bio and chemical, etc.
The simple fact is that no matter HOW MANY guns and knives a person might have in their home, the government can destroy them from outer space, with no manpower, no risk and no fear. This nullifies the deterrent of weapons far more than any "gun control" does.
Stew
I both agree and disagree.
I think that people with FEDERALIST leanings are more to blame. Isolated pockets of socialism are not damaging when they are confined. At that point, it becomes a choice, rather than an obligation. For example, if California decided they wanted welfare, excelelnt. It is the nationwide push for such things that cause problems.
Our country was designed (and was most efficiently operated) as a loosely coupled federation of states. The federal control extended to ALMOST nothing, except where it concerned one state accepting the laws of other states and where it concerned international trade, commerce, war and diplomacy.
In this structure, if California becomes corrupt with power, you are free to move to Oregon. Presumably, there would develop a certain state of homeostasis between locations as like minded individuals move together and learn to inter operate with other groups of unlike minded people.
On the far other extreme end from your socialist comment lies a society of laissez-faire corporate oligarchy, not seen since the "oil baron" days of entire cities, owned, policed and supervised by corporate regulations and institutions, where corporations oppress citizens in exactly the same way, from exactly the opposite direction.
Surely there is a balance in the middle?
Regardless, the balance must be approached seperately by a number of smaller state governments, rather than centrally by a bureaucratic federal dictatorship.
Stew
The simple fact is that human nature tends to cause us to use power whenever we can. This is the reason that there are checks and balances in our government. Some smart guys realized a few hundred years ago, that a position with unchecked power will eventually be abused by a person seeking personal gain.
This is a fact.
This is a truth of humanity.
Laws such as the patriot act, which remove checks and balances and allow individuals or small groups of like-minded individuals to act unilaterally in a way that is damaging to the rights of other citizens is a gross violation of this principle and is evidence to a loss of touch with what our government is put in place to do.
While protecting the people is a primary goal of a government, protecting the people must weigh protections both on the freedom and liberty of people against the PHYSICAL protection of people.
Unfortunately, our society is so sheltered from physical trauma, we have grown risk-averse in a disturbing way.
A few hundred years ago, when most people did not reach 60, and 1/4 of children died before adolescence, we had a realistic view of how important liberty is in our society. People dealt with death and destruction, as it was part of nature. Liberty, however, was not a constant and had to be protected at all costs.
Today, people take liberty for granted and so fear death and destruction that they will throw away their liberty for temporary saftey.
This is the trap which our founding fathers warned us against. They saw its power and also its danger.
We need to open our eyes to that truth as well.
Stew
With 1200 senators, the legislator would pass nothing, except "castrate the sex offenders" legislation, since that's the only thing that would make it out of filibuster. :-)
Stew
See, you made the leap already.
Here is the equation:
Problem: Islamic terrorists threaten the US
Goal: Stop Islamic terrorists from threatening the US.
OK, now the question lies in whether or not there is a way to stop islamic terrorists from threatening the US.
The question IS NOT "how do we kick Sadam out of Iraq". In fact, "kick Sadam out of Iraq" is more on the solution end than on the question end.
But there are alternatives other than "kick Sadam out of Iraq".
I am not saying that I disagree that this is at least a moderately justified action, but also pointing out that your bone-headed logic makes you look like an imbecilic ideologue.
Stew
Radio waves.... they go INTO your body.
If the air space within my sinuses is not my property....
Then I'm scared.
Stew
One of the primary problems with RFID is that it is "wireless" in nature. It is also designed to be "simplistic" for the simple case of economic savings.
While it is a great technology for information such as Barcode scanning and inventory tracking, its use in biometrics, identification and access controls is less secure. Transmitting significant and irrevocable information in an RFID pulse is irresponsible.
Where a barcode is ubiquitous and the concept of "stealing" it is silly, and even where the ID number of a "proxmity card" employee ID badge is easily revocable, information stored on a passport, such as biometrics, permanent identification numbers and the like are not revocable.
If you have such a passport, it is advisable that you either fry the RFID chip (i am not responsible for the legal issues surrounding it) or you store your passport in a metal safe, where RF cannot pass. There are already bags on the market with an integrated faraday cage, it is not entirely practical to keep your RFID identity perpetually in this bag while traveling (not to mention the headache at the airport screening area with a metal-laced bag).
In short, this new RFID identity system is one of the most ill-advised and potentially dangerous (vulnerable to easy identity theft) systems in recent history, and is simply ASKING for people to duplicate it, while providing no benefit other than the government control ("papers please") that it demands.
Stewed
Newer versions do, indeed, work.
This was not the case when IE7 first came out.
5.3R10 and 5.4R2.1 both seem to be reasonably stable versions that support IE7.
When IE7 came out, I believe 5.3R7 was the newest and SAM simply refused to run under IE7 at that point.
Stew
She has a degree in reading.. from Harvard.
Funny.
(yes, I know it's an education degree, etc, etc but it's still funny)
There was nothing in the article to suggest that they did not test it.
It merely came to the conclusion that there were more problems (internal apps that don't work, etc) than solutions (uhhh? fancy shiny toolbars?)
Stew
The 5.3.8 and newer revisions supported IE7, but none of them until 5.3.10 supported "Intel Macs". Both of which are new releases that came out AFTER IE7 was released.
The day IE7 came out, no revisions that worked properly with IE7 were available. 5.4R1 came out shortly later but was very buggy (WSAM barely worked). Then a few months later, 5.3R9 came out that did have IE7 support also.
We are currently running 5.3R10 as it is the most reliable version that has all of the support we need. 5.4R2.1 is out, but still has some niggling issues we weren't happy with.
Keep in mind we have some *very* complicated rulesets for different business areas, different levels of access and different resources.
Stew
WSUS is great, and I'm definatley aware of how it works, but 90% of my users use laptops from public wireless APs or via cell phone wireless "broadband".
Neither of which is conducive to forcing updates from a central server.
Stew
The jump from different phylum, rather than simply different species is an extrapolation, this is correct.
There are plenty of fossil records of animals that are intermediary steps between two different "types" of animals. I have seen about 12 intermediate steps between something that could be best described as "dog" to the modern "horse". There is a well documented progression in that regard that is a sum of small steps such as lenghtening limbs, snout, bone mass, apparent muscle structure, etc
There are clear fossil progressions between what could be described as a "catfish" and what could be described as a "salamander" in very small steps, each of which is not a "blind jump".
While not all species have recorded fossils for this change, this is very likely due to something you pointed out.... the situation that leads to fossilization is somewhat rare on a global scale.
It is somewhat spurious to claim that since we didn't OBSERVE a process that took 1 million years, that it simply didn't happen. There are many examples of progressive steps from one place to another and there are many observable changes that are at least as significant.
As for your grand canyon reference..... the volume of water has less to do with the speed of erosion than the time involved in that erosion. You can rush a quadrillion gallons of water over limestone for a month and it won't gouge a mile deep hole. It will rush right over it, stripping all of the boulders and loose sediment from the surface. However, if you set a garden hose-sized, sediment-rich stream out on a limestone rock, you can dig a few inch deep hole a decade or so. Rerouted water for dams and irrigation have shown that very cleary. Given the canyon is dated at 4 million years, there is ample time to dig a mile or two into solid rock.
In addition, during the last ice age, parts of the canyon were glacier beds. We know with some certainty that sediment-bedded glaciers can dig much faster than water. It has been clearly measured... Not that this is even necessary given the erosion capability of water over 5 million years.
Your whole grand canyon tack relies on a bunch of false prepositions and ignorant assumptions and is mostly circular.
Are you one of the kooks who argues that radioisotope dating is wrong as well? I'm sure you can produce a book or two that states this theory, but it is not backed up in fact. It generally relies on gross misunderstandings of the process to attempt to prove a point, while it actually is a laughingstock amongst physicists who actually understand the process.
Your argument on both these cases is akin to this one:
Me: I heard of a man that once walked across the United States.
You: This is impossible! I've never observed a man walk more than 2 miles in a stretch and that took him a whole hour! Even the best runners run 25 miles in 3 hours!
Me: It supposedly took him over a year.
You: This is impossible! I have never seen someone walk for a years!
Me: He rested each evening and walked for 12 hours per day.
You: This is fiction!! Nobody has ever seen a man walk for a year straight! Nobody has ever even seen a man walk for a week straight!
Me: There are some photos of him walking through different places
You: This is fiction!! Walking that far is impossible! Someone must have BROUGHT him there!
Me: *sighs*
Stew
I can list the Enterprise applications that do not work, in any capacity, under IE7.
They work under IE6, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Konqueror, but not under IE7.
Juniper SA is one example. Some older versions of PeopleSoft act kind of funky. Some of the online CRM stuff doesn't behave properly.... there are others... not to mention all the internal software.
Blah.
Also, don't discount the fact that the average business-cost of a man-hour of employee time is about $30/hr and assuming a liberal 1 hour to coordinate with the user, access their machine and do a complete install and config (including staff overhead), the cost of deploying it to 60,000 users is a hair under $2 million in IT costs and $2 million in productivity loss during the upgrade process.
And then the question is "why did we just spend $4 million"? What did it get us?
Stew
It is very ordinary for a company (or government agency) to adopt a "wait and see" attitude toward new software. Most companies I've worked for will not install a new OS, new software, new firmware, new drivers or whatever until they've gone through at least one revision.
Recently because of Microsofts crappy handling of IE7 upgrades (flagging them as "critical updates"), we had a number of remote users on IE7 and our SSL VPN appliances simply would not work. I had to call a moritorium on upgrading to IE7 and deployed the Microsoft "prevent IE7 update" patch in order to stop these critical updates.
Then, I had to use early-release code for our Juniper VPN concentrator, which broke about half a dozen other things.... Finally, after a few weeks, new a firmware revision for the Juniper VPN came out which enabled me to get the box back to a stable state AND allow IE7 to be used.
But if we had simply called a "ban" on IE7 upgrades in the first place, it would have saved me a lot of headache and our company a lot of productivity.
This is not a "Microsoft sux" decision, but merely a business-case against early-release software that they would likely take whether it was Microsoft or Juniper or Cisco or Oracle or whatever...
Now, Microsoft's handling of the IE7 "critical update" bullcrap.... that falls clearly in the arena of "Microsoft sux".
Stew
best Robin williams voice here:
Stew
This claim is complete and blatant fabrication.
I will only list the ones that have happened in nature, since the number of speciation events that have been caused by direct human intervention are too many to count.
1) The beak length of the ground finch on Daphne Major Island has changed drastically and divergently since they were first observed a few hundred years ago.
2) Rapid speciation of the Faeroe Island house mouse, which occurred in less than 250 years after man brought the creature to the island. It is now clearly a new species (and incapable of interbreeding) from the house mouse found on the mainland, with noticably different physical features.
3) Dark moths have almost complete replaced white moths on softwood trees in fire-afflicted or pollution-heavy areas, where trees have grown dark instead of white (this was observed to have happened in less than 20 years), coming from a rare "albino" sort of gene that was a random mutation.
4) Goatsbeards flowers speciated in less than 300 years so that there is a new "North American" variant that is vastly different and genetically incompatable with the origional species.
5) Fruiteflys (Rhagoletis pomonella) have speciated naturally since the introduction of Apple Trees to North America a few hundred years ago into two (possibly more) incompatable species.
6) the grass Anthoxanthum has been known to undergo parapatric speciation in such cases as mine contamination of an area. Selection for resistance/tolerance to certain metals occurs. Flowering time generally changes (in an attempt at character displacement--strong selection against interbreeding--as the hybrids are generally ill-suited to the environment) and often plants will become self-pollinating.
This claim is complete and blatant fabrication.
In a lab, bacterial speciation is actually considered a PROBLEM because it happens so often during lengthy experiments (30,000+ generations or so) that it tends to screw up the results and elaborate controls are put in place to prevent speciation. Google "bacteria speciation" to see for yourself. Read about the introduction of neucleotides to kill divergent species and the encouragement of genetic
The fact that one particular bacteria didn't turn into another particular bacteria doesn't show anything except that genetic divergence is a totally random process and with billions of nucleotides, the odds of one divergence being identical to one that happened in the past is so very unlikely as to be ridiculous.
More complex organisims have been made to speciate, by definition in as little as 6 generations. Consider the following:
Rice and Salt bred fruit flies, Drosophila melanogaster, using a maze with three different choices such as light/dark and wet/dry. Each generation was placed into the maze, and the groups of flies which came out of two of the eight exits were set apart to breed with each other in their respective groups. After thirty-five generations, the two groups and their offspring would not breed with each other even when doing so was their only opportunity to reproduce.
or this one
Diane Dodd was also able to show allopatric speciation by reproductive isolation in Drosophila pseudoobscura fruit flies after only eight generations using different food types, starch and maltose.[7] Dodd's experiment has been easy for many others to replicate, including with other kinds of fruit flies and foods.
Or this
Shikano, et al. (1990) reported that an unidentified bacterium underwent a major morphological change when grown in the presence of a ciliate predator. This bacterium's normal morphology is a s
Frankly, one would have asked ten years ago "is mainframe administration a practical career".
A look at job postings would have told you "yes" but an educated discussion would have told you it was a dead end.
So frankly, your assertion is crap.
Monster tells you that there are great JOBS to be found... but does not tell you if it is a great career and whether a degree is essential or not (which has become the root of the discussion).
Very nice gripe though....
Stewed
This is the essence of the whole discussion distilled into two short sentences and it bears repeating
OK that should do it.
Stew
See, we graduated highschool around the same time. I attended a far away school because I got some scholarships to cover tuition costs and I graduated with a degree in Computer Engineering, with a focus on networking and InfoSec. I worked about 10 hours per week doing "sideline" jobs for an average rate of $50/hr (there was a "student discount" at $35/hr if they live on campus and the rest was $60/hr).
I also made some contacts in the world and was making about $70/hr doing freelance technical writing. I took a number of technical writing classes as electives and combined with my English and History classes, it gave me a great foundation in writing and communications.
I worked as an Intern with a large telecom doing Network Engineering the summer of my Senior year. I got the job because of my knowledge of ASIC design and assembly-level microprocessor programming, as we had a number of custom interfaces that required tweaking. I eventually graduated and got a full time job in the IT field. My full time position was unrelated to my programming work or my programming experience, but it was the contacts I made and the people I impressed with fundamental hardware knowledge that got me into the position.
I just moved into the position of IT Director for a sizable, nationwide consulting company and I find that my communication skills learned in college were the key that opened that particular door, after making contacts from my previous work because of my knowledge of ICs and low-level programming gained in college. I never wanted to be a programmer, but I was able to "leverage" (buzzword!!!) my skills to make contacts which resulted in my landing my Dream Job (I just turned 26).
The information security training I got by taking electives such as "Fundamentals of InfoSec" and the lab class called "Information Warfare" were the key that put together my contacts at my current position as I was spending time writing articles about security issues. These articles generated a discussion which my current employer oversaw and he invited me in for an Interview.
Ultimately, I have a few certs, but I'm not sure that my life would have changed if I had left them off my resume completely. The most valuable one I have is the CISSP, merely for the clout of it, but frankly, the test was one of the easier ones out there in my opinion, probably because of my college background, where I got a really deep understanding of the fundamentals behind the technology rather than the shallow "here is how the tool works" that you get from most certs (especially vendor-specific certs).
While it's really cool that you're an expert as Cisco IOS, judging from industry trends, Cisco IOS will be indistinguishable from current versions in a few years, if it still exists. Most routers are moving into PC-based GUI consoles for router interfacing, both for the simplicity (and resistance to user error) and the ability to dynamically allocate resources on a network-wide scale, without having to manually modify individual router configs. Juniper's newest version of NSM is a fabulous example of this. If you had bothered to become and expert in the command-line Juniper router config 6 years ago, your skill would be almost totally obsolete now, but if you could show a fundamental understanding of routing and IP, you would be valuable.
Certs address an immediate need, a short term goal and a shallow skillset. While they are valuable, they are not a "solution". A university degree almost ensures that you have addressed deeper levels of understanding and that you are capable of handling that level of understanding and pushing forward to complete something monumental (a degree) without backing out.
No cert will ever replace a degree in my opinion. I half a dozen certs and one degree.... if i had to pick one over the other on my resume, it is very obvious what i would choose. And yes, I would remove 4 years from my experience to show that degree.
Stew
On the other hand, I got a BS in Computer Engineering and moved into the position of IT Manager in 3 years (plus 3.5 for college). On the flip side, if IT gets outsourced to robots or Chinese, I have experience in chip design, microprocessor control integration, physics, history and mathematics.
While it's true I missed out on 4 years of $40k salary, I think the degree more than makes up for it.
Stew
Your mind is closed.
You shake your head and say "it's not possible" but we could go through a hypothetical scenario where HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of these small changes evolves a guppy into a marmot.
Of course, it would be the length of a small book, but it could be done and there would be NO "magic leap".... just a clearly explainable series of small mutations that cause divergent EVOLUTION over time.
guppy -> tidal pool fish -> walking fish -> salamder -> gecko -> lizard -> mouse -> mole -> marmot
The only real leap I'm seeing here is the lizard -> mouse and I'll grant that I'm not experienced enough in evolutionary biology to summarize that jump, but the others are quite obvious and have very clear fossil precursors. There still exist today, walking fish... and a few species that do walk, but don't do it well.... while there are others that do it quite well and can live out of water for days.... and there are also amphibians that must return to the water regularily, just like there are reptiles that are very closely related to amphibians. The jump from mouse to mole to marmot can't be a huge one for your small brain either.
I don't see where there is a big magic gap. If you choose to imagine it happening in an instantaneous *poof* of evolution, then sure it doesn't make sense, but you can't even GRASP the concept of 300 million of something.... especially when there are many species of fish that mature in a few weeks. A hundred years could be 400 generations. Every hundred years, these fish have more generations than humans have had in all of recorded history (about 8,000 years). Do you know how many times 100 years has happened? 3 million times. How many is three million? Well lets say there is one obvious genetic mutation every 50 generations. This is very plausable from laboratory study and natural observations. In harsh climates its actually much less than 50 generations. So this is about 10 years for most species. Lets say it takes 100 such small changes to bring about "speciation".... AND that only one out of a THOUSAND of these changes permits better reproductive success. This could happen every 100,000 years.
Given 300 million years, this could result in 3,000 different seperate speciation event timeframes. Now, assuming every species that formed stuck around and spawned another speciation event every 100,000 years, that could results in.... mmmmmm *calculator pounding*.....
1.23 x 10^903 possible speciation events.
Lets assume that 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 99999999999999999999999999999999999% (yes, that is 300 digits) of these species die out quickly.
We're left with.... 2.3 x 10^600 species
that's more atoms than there are in the universe.
Even if we assume it takes 1000 generations rather than 100 and takes 1000 mutations rather than 100.... the numbers of possible outcomes and the potential number of difference species is still astounding.
So called "micro evolution" is a clearly studied, documented, tested and provable theory. Creationists decry the made-up concept of "macro evolution", running on the assumption that big changes must happen "all at once". But where does "micro" turn to "macro"? Small changes are cumulitave. When you add up 100 or 1,000 of them, you find yourself with a vastly different organism that may not even be similar enough to their ancestor to breed (hence, a new species). You start again and a sum of small changes results in a vastly different animal. And then you do it again, a thousand small changes results in something vastly different... and then again... and again... and again... thousands of times. And you got fr
the theory of punctuated equilibrium is predicated on drastic climactic changes.
This is more akin to saying: A few men walk to work and home every single day for 10 years, without anything but minor changes.
Suddenly, their homes and offices are destroyed by a fire. He walks 100 miles to the next town over and begins a new routine, walking to home and work.
His office is destroyed so he stops walking to work for awhile.
Your "suddenly jump to sydney" is more akin to the concept that a fish suddenly turned into a monkey. In fact, the fish turned into a walking fish that turned into an amphibian which turned into a reptile. Those are changes that have fairly obvious progressions. You can see the walking fish that looks sort of like a fish and sort of like a salamader. You can see the gecko that looks sort of like a reptile and sort of like an amphibian. Now there were periods where those changes happened rapidly... perhaps because the seashore where they lived was made barren by climate changes, so only the few fish that were able to walk 100 yards inland were able to survive. Those 'fucked up mutated fish' were actually closer to a salamander in that they had funky sticks for fins (legs). They came from a line of fish that were remarkably tolerant to living out of the water for short periods because their ancestors had to spend some time in tidal pools during a period of low nutrient supply in coastal waters.
All of this happened within 1000 years and therefore, on a geological scale, it is absolutely unrecordably short.... punctuated equilibrium.
We see fish... and suddenly we see salamanders and how did we get there? Well there were a few generations of really fucked up mutated fish that just happened to survive by crawling onto the beach while all their "normal" buddies had to swim out to sea and turn into sharks. From a modern day looking back, the change happened "immediately". After all, they were fish for 100,000 years and suddenly in 50 years they became amphibians. woah!
your misunderstanding of the theory makes your argument weak.
Stew
Uhm.... about 18 of those questions are totally bunk.
Name calling, blatant oversight, willful ignorance.... some other phrases I can't haven't thought of yet.
the other two... well those are lingering questions rather than "proof positive". As for creationism.... aside from one ancient, poorly translated text, it is all a "lingering question".
Stew